[media-credit name=’Derek Montgomery’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit] Senator John Kerry and President George W. Bush have dashed across battleground states in the waning hours of a tightrope race to the White House.

The two presidential candidates crossed common territory during their final campaign weekend as they rallied with marathon-like speed. While Kerry visited Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio prior to returning to his hometown of Boston, Mass., Bush stopped in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa and New Mexico before his final rally in Texas.

Both candidates made numerous appearances in the Badger State. Two days after attracting more than 80,000 in a Madison rally, Kerry spoke to a throng of people in Appleton Saturday morning. Bush and Kerry then rallied in Milwaukee Monday.

Chris Lato, communications director of Wisconsin’s Republican Party, said Bush tried to reach out to both grassroots and undecided voters of Wisconsin by speaking in heavily Republican areas and those that seemed “a little wobbly.”

During his Appleton rally, Kerry tried to tap into the emotions of independent and women voters by evoking a portrait of an Iraqi soldier’s family at a polling booth who questioned whether their loved one is coming home.

“And they’re going to wonder whether or not we can afford four more years of a president who is unwilling to admit any mistake at all that he has made and says that he would do it all over again exactly the way that he has done it now,” he said while presenting the scenario.

The Massachusetts senator directed his message to the workingman by asking the crowd to give him a chance to “roll up” his sleeves and “fight for the middle class.”

Kerry also attacked the president’s economic record while assuring the audience of his own military competency.

“I will never choose a tax cut to the wealthy over the defense of the United States of America,” Kerry told the Appleton crowd.

In light of the recent videotape featuring Osama bin Laden, Kerry said he shared the president’s determination to hunt down the terrorist.

But the Democratic challenger blasted Bush’s failure to capture the al Qaeda leader.

“As I have said for two years now, when Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda were cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, it was wrong to outsource the job of capturing them to Afghan warlords,” Kerry said.

While some political pundits predict the tape will help Bush by evoking an image of his alleged leadership on the war of terror, others say it will support Kerry’s claim that bin Laden is still a threat.

Lato said he saw a “troubling parallel” between the terrorist’s tape and a Hollywood filmmaker.

“It’s like Michael Moore handed him the talking points and just handled the camera,” Lato said, adding there were key similarities between bin Laden’s and Moore’s criticisms of the Bush administration.

University of Wisconsin political science professor Charles Franklin said the tape should help Bush.

Although polls have indicated the tape may have a minimal effect on voters’ choice of candidate, it might still make people think of terrorism as a more salient issue, Franklin added.

Franklin also said that while the American public might have expected another bin Laden tape, it was quite different from the emergence of Bush’s DUI college record prior to the 2000 elections.

“The DUI was something Bush had clearly chosen not to bring up himself,” Franklin said.